Chapter Fifteen

I get the addresses while Iris and Hex keep Lucas distracted, and the rest of the time spent learning about Route Planning is a balanced mix of educational and alarming.

I should have been down here years ago. And not because it’s my duty—I actually like this. Learning about our Holiday. Seeing the extent these people go to in order to bring joy across the world to kids who believe in Santa and parents who are struggling to make ends meet and anyone who needs a small miracle, a silly toy, a smile. I remember what Hex said, about how we give people the tools to endure whatever shit occurs in their lives, and I start to feel that, seeing how everyone who works here lights up when they start explaining anything to me. They’re happy. Happy to be doing these jobs. Happy to be a part of this.

It’s a night and day difference from when I did that staged training. Then, everyone had been tense and clinical. This is real.

The version of Dad I built up in my head may not be who he is, but it wasn’t wrong.

It’s our job to make the world happy.

By the time Iris, Hex, and I leave, I’m downright bouncing.

This— that, those people, what they do, what we do—is enough. Or it can be, if we stopped focusing on monopolizing and scale back to provide stuff of quality and prioritize exactly what light shines in all those people’s eyes.

I’m so consumed in my own churning thoughts that I don’t notice both Iris and Hex have followed me back to my suite. Kris is already inside, and I come to with no memory of having walked here.

I hold my hands out. “My head hasn’t hurt this bad since I took Ethics in American Politics.” Then I drop onto my bed and screw the heels of my palms into my eyes.

“Uh-oh,” Kris says. “Unsuccessful?”

“Psh.” I dig the paper with my notes out of my pocket and hold it up between two fingers, eyes shut. “Don’t doubt my skill.”

Someone takes it from me.

“Then what’s wrong with His Moodiness?” Kris asks, and I can hear him settling at my desk, likely starting to organize where these letters are going.

The bed sinks next to me, at the edge of the mattress. It thrills me to no end that I know it’s him without needing to open my eyes. I know the catch of his breath, I know the weight of his body, and I blindly sit up and drop my head into the bend of his neck. Hex leans into me, and though it’s Iris and Kris, I fight for some decorum and hold there against him.

“I don’t know what’s wrong,” Iris drones. “None of you will tell me .”

“You shouldn’t even be in here,” I say into Hex’s shoulder.

“Coal.”

The dip in Iris’s tone is so ripe with reprimand that I pull back to look at her before I can think not to. She’s glaring, and guilt surges over me.

“Mom,” I shoot back.

She smacks my head. “I know you’re trying to keep whatever you’re doing separate from Easter, but I’m not just my Holiday. I’m your friend. And I want to help you with whatever this is. It’s changing you, Coal, and I gotta say—I’m liking it. Plus, it would affect Easter, eventually, wouldn’t it? So let me help now.”

I point at her, half leaning into Hex, but when I say, “No,” I hear how weak it sounds.

Iris drops into a chair. “That wasn’t a question. I’m staying. What are we doing?”

Yeah, okay, she’s right, it does involve her and would affect Easter. So… how bad would the fallout be if this backfires on her too? She said her court wouldn’t force her dad to abdicate based on something like this, but…

Easter. Halloween. Christmas. Up in smoke because of me.

Really putting my degree in Global Affairs to good use here, aren’t I?

The joke hurts. And I see news bulletins scrolling on a bar TV—

With a long, miserable groan, I start at the beginning and give her a quick summation of how god awful my dad has warped Christmas into being. I talk about contacting the winter Holidays, inviting them here for the Christmas Eve Ball, then confronting my dad with a united front and forcing him to make changes. I tell her about the blackmail with Halloween, but not the specifics of it—it’s not mine to tell.

Iris is, unsurprisingly, slack-jawed when I’m done. She wilts in her chair, a slow head shake making her braids tumble over her shoulder. Her reaction is ripe with resignation though. The same poisonous vein that pulses through me, wanting to be surprised but no, none of this is really surprising.

“Would that work, you think?” I finally acknowledge the rush of hope that wells up behind that question. “It’d still benefit Easter, so it’d appease the assholes in your court who have it out for you, if we can convince your dad to join in. But getting my dad to fold first will be the biggest obstacle, and if he does, I don’t see why yours wouldn’t join the collective out of at least self-preservation. It’d work, wouldn’t it?”

It’d get us both out of this marriage. It’d alleviate some of her stresses about Easter’s own shit by giving them a safety net.

Iris reads the hope straining behind my words, in my face, and shrugs, but her posture of shock and resignation doesn’t change.

“Maybe, Coal,” she whispers. “I—maybe.”

My racing heart stutters on a sharp inhale. “You’re okay with me doing this? If you think it would fuck up shit for you…”

God, I have no other ideas. This is everything I’ve got rolled into one potentially disastrous Hail Mary, but if she thinks it’d do more harm than good, I’d try, fucking try to find something else—

Iris gives a soft smile. “Yeah. I am. Just—it’s a lot to take in.”

I don’t know what kind of reaction I expected. Jumping up and down in relief? When the fuck has Iris ever jumped up and down in her life. This cautious exhaustion is way more understandable, and I nod at her, wrestling up a reassuring grin.

Kris spins around in my desk chair, cutting through the thick energy. “So we’re good to deliver these letters? Then we wait, I guess. Terribly exciting stuff.”

“How will the other leaders send their responses?” Iris shakes herself upright.

I stare blankly at her.

Kris stares blankly at her.

“You didn’t tell them how they should RSVP?” she pushes. “How will you know if they’re coming?”

“They’ll… show up? Shit.” I scratch my forehead. “That was dumb. But there’s no good place for them to respond, is there? They can’t very well send something to the palace. Could they use magic to drop something into my suite? Would Dad feel that?”

“Unlikely,” Hex says. “We have no connection to other Holidays’ uses of magic, even ones who would be linked by tithing as you are. Their magic is its own separate function.”

“Though I feel like a worm asking them to use their already limited magic, limited because of us, on something Christmas-related. No better ideas?”

The room hangs in silence.

“Shit,” I say again. “Okay. So—Kris?” I wince at the stack of sealed, ready-to-go letters behind him. “Can you add something about them sending their responses to me magically? And how we’ll make it up to them.”

He spins around. “We’ll need to get better at this.”

“What, you mean two guys who have never had to apply their foreign affairs studies to real-world situations are sucking at it right out of the gate? Who would’ve guessed?”

“Didn’t you finish your senior capstone where you did exactly that?”

“It was a group project and the real-world situation was presenting a slideshow to a boardroom of government officials. It had nothing to do with espionage.”

“I’m willing to bet Dad knew we’d suck at it. Which was part of his plan, right? That we could never do stuff like this so we’d be forced to comply with his shit.”

I’ve been maneuvering around that realization, but hearing Kris say it, my chest aches.

Dad wants what’s best for Christmas. I believe that. But I don’t know how far he’s willing to go to see his version of best through.

Hex rocks into me, a slight bump, and I feel the implication in it. Do you still need my help?

“When the letters are done,” I say, “we can’t drop them in with the normal palace mail.”

“We could deliver them using magic, maybe?” Kris offers.

“Dad would know. He can sense our magic use, at least.”

“Iris could deliver them with magic? Or Hex? Or—” Kris glances at me as he works open the envelopes. “You look like you have a plan.”

I give a sly smile. “How would you like to sneak out into North Pole City?”

Kris’s brows raise. “We’ve never done that before. Why haven’t we done that before?”

“Because using magic to hop around to nightclubs across the world is more glamorous. But we should have been doing it. And, to avoid Dad finding out, I have a better mode of transport.”

I grin down at Hex.

Who shoves up from my bed—unacceptable, but I’ll allow it this time—and with an easy, graceful throw of his wrist, creates a whole-ass portal in my bedroom.

The door-size oval is shaded in black, ripples of darkness in a frame that shows an alley in North Pole City. There’s the square, the ice skating rink, all under the clear afternoon sky.

Iris and Kris fly to their feet.

I follow them up and bracket Hex’s hips with my hands, my smile pressing to his ear. “God, you’re useful— wait. Wait a hot fucking second.”

He glances up at me.

“Is this how you vanished on me at the bar?”

Hex’s eyebrows bounce in a show of duh.

“You imp .” I capture his hips against my body and bite his neck. He chirrups in surprise. “Fuck me, I thought I was losing my mind when you were gone.”

“And I thought Coal was losing his mind too,” Iris says. “I didn’t see a damn thing. Impressive.”

“I have my talents,” Hex says, and I should be given an award for not responding to that perfect setup. “Halloween’s magic thrives on joy created most by mischief. And, for as long as we are gone, provided it isn’t days, anyone who comes searching for us will conveniently be diverted elsewhere.”

“We should’ve made friends with someone from Halloween years ago,” Kris says, lifting one hand to touch the edge of the portal. A waft of smoke uncoils, drifts around his fingers. “You didn’t need a doorway? You conjured a fucking portal in midair. With a literal flick of your wrist.”

“It’s how we dispose of the corpses.”

Kris flinches like the portal bit him. “What?”

Hex is serene. “The corpses. Once our magic wears off and the zombies stop being animated. We open a portal to a landfill and toss them through.”

He lays his hand over mine where it’s still on his hip and squeezes. I grin into the back of his head.

It is not even a little surprising that him fucking with people is a major turn-on.

Iris leans over to Hex and stage-whispers, “Kris doesn’t know you’re teasing him again.”

Kris glowers at Iris, then Hex. “I know. Obviously.”

“I am teasing, Kris.” Hex cocks his head. “Halloween does not defile corpses.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I swear on my great-great-grandmother. Or I would, if we could find her. She never likes to stay in her tomb for very—”

“Okay, so, we’re sneaking out into your city,” Iris cuts in, saving Kris, and Hex tosses a pressed-lip smirk up at me.

I hug his hips to me one more time. “God, you’re hot.”

“Then we’re mailing those letters,” Iris continues, “and…?”

I exhale, ruffling Hex’s hair. “And we’re going to talk to the people there. I want to find out what they think of us, really think of us.”

“You think they’ll be honest with you, Prince Nicholas?” Her eyes go up and down my body.

“Fair enough.”

Kris gets back to work repackaging the envelopes and I shuffle through my closet for basic gear I don’t usually wear and isn’t as put together as my Wren-styled outfits. I toss some to Kris and Hex too, and Iris, who reluctantly changes out of her sleek purple coat and into a drab old gray one of mine. I grab a few pairs of sunglasses, tug a hat fully over my curls so they’re less noticeable.

Hex pulls on a blue coat, his equally noticeable hair tucked up under a bright red hat. It’s more the fact that he’s wearing my clothes than that he’s in color that has me restraining myself, again, from kissing him, and wow, yeah, this is why I opted out of the event earlier. It is way too hard to be around him and not touch him.

Iris shoves her hands into her pockets and gives me an appraising grin. “Wow, Coal. Look at you, all grown up.”

I roll my eyes.

“No, I’m serious.” She steps forward and points at my head. “I think I saw some gray hair, right—”

“Okay, okay.” I bat her away. “Game faces. We have jobs to do.”

Iris and Kris go motionless. They share a look.

“This all went from entertaining to somewhat frightening,” Iris murmurs. “Who is he and what’s he done with your brother?”

The square of North Pole City has the same sentiment of cheer as when we’d come ice skating, only it feels less orchestrated.

Way less orchestrated.

Wooden booths sell Christmas goods still, scenting the afternoon air with spices and cocoa and cider, and people skate and laugh. Music plays, a live band dancing to their own songs on one end of the square, with tables set up where people decorate gingerbread cookies or make wreaths or do other festive activities. Twinkly strand lights and a few bigger floodlights illuminate the area, and space heaters keep the arctic chill at bay.

Everyone, everywhere, no matter what they’re doing, smiles into the frosty air. This whole square is saturated in joy, pure and unforced.

I linger at the edge of the alley. Kris, next to me, is similarly stunned.

“I forgot it could feel this way,” he whispers.

It’s what I was thinking. How long has it been since Christmas felt this unburdened for us?

I sniff away the severity. “We’re here now—so we get to experience this joy too.”

Kris doesn’t say anything, but that silence is weighted enough that he doesn’t need to.

I nudge him. “There. Mailbox.”

He sets off, and Iris and Hex come up around me.

“Where should we—oh, cookies!” Iris grabs my hand and hauls me into the square, and I let her, because I had no real plan beyond this point.

The musicians are playing some instrumental songs, fast beats and uplifting melodies and I swear I can feel my stress start to peel off. I let Iris push me into a seat at a long table, and cookies are shoved in front of us, frosting and sprinkles and candy in dozens of bowls, the whole table is a disaster zone of rainbow sugary concoctions.

Hex sits next to me, Kris joins across from us, and it hits me, sinks in, that we’ve never done this before. Just enjoyed Christmas anywhere. It’s always masked behind performative lead-up celebration stunts.

And here I’d thought skating with Hex would be the closest I’d get to being anything like a normal couple. I swing on him and smile and Hex leans into me, returning that smile, and for a second, for a beat, this is all that exists. No other responsibilities.

We smear frosting on cookies and pile on way too many sprinkles, and I let my mind drift out, listening to the conversations around us.

Most people are talking about their plans, what they’ll be doing for Christmas and into the New Year. Someone is traveling. Someone else is having a Christmas movie marathon, and for the life of me I don’t think I’ve ever watched more than one Christmas movie in a single year let alone a single day, but they seem excited about their binge.

There’s no mention of us, and I lose focus on my cookie decorating as I realize I have no idea how to smoothly ask people what they think of their royal family without sounding like one of those aggressive reporters.

An idea springs to mind.

Oh, Iris will hate me, but she wanted to come, right?

I swing a cocky grin across the table at her. Her face sinks in that I know you’re up to something, don’t you dare glower.

“Oh my god ,” I say, overly loud, “you look just like Princess Iris!”

The people around our end of the table turn from their conversations.

“She does!”

“Oh, you’re lovely just like her!”

“It’s uncanny!”

Iris takes a deep breath and quickly mouths I hate you before she turns a small smile at the nearest person. “I get that a lot. I don’t mind. She’s sweet, right?”

“Extremely,” an older woman says. She’s helping what must be her granddaughter decorate a series of gingerbread reindeer, and the ratio of frosting to cookie is irrevocably tipped in favor of frosting. “Though, I have to admit, I don’t think either of them is worthy of her.”

I grip my hand into a fist to keep from reaching for Hex, but I hear the sharp pull of his breath.

“Either prince?” I guess stupidly.

The woman bats my arm good-naturedly. “Don’t tell me you haven’t voted yet? I thought I was the only one left. It’s been all the Christmas Inquirer has posted about for days.”

“Voted?” Now my confusion is honest.

“Oh my god!” A girl leans across the table towards me. “You have to vote for the Halloween Prince! You have to!”

“Oh, please!” A guy next to her rolls his eyes. “He’ll never catch up. Obviously our Christmas Prince will win! CHRISTMAS!”

A cheer goes down the table, a small chant, Christmas, Christmas.

Everyone is laughing in good fun, but the mood has thoroughly changed for me.

“You’re voting on who Iris will marry?” I press.

The first woman leans towards me with a conspiratorial glint in her eyes. “It won’t really affect the final decision, but it’s fun. Maybe she’ll take our opinions to heart! Who knows how they decide these things.”

Okay, let’s take stock of the good things I know: our people don’t seem to hate us. Check.

But they don’t seem to see us as people either. Voting on who Iris marries in a goddamn tabloid.

Is that any better than what Dad’s doing to us?

“How do—” I catch myself, lick my lips. “What do you think of them? The… royals, I mean.”

I could have asked that less conspicuously, but the woman is thankfully distracted by her granddaughter’s cookie progress.

“They’re lovely, of course—oh, honey! Enough with the chocolate sprinkles—”

“You don’t think all those pictures of them are a bit… forced?”

The woman has turned away, but she shakes her head. The guy and girl across from me catch my question, and I wonder if maybe they’re drunk, because they instantly giggle.

The girl opens up her phone and starts scrolling. “Eh, not forced —I mean, look, those are smiles!” She shows me her screen. It’s a picture on 24-Hour Fête from ice skating, Iris and Kris on the rink, and they are, legitimately, happy. “But yeah”—she pulls her phone back—“I miss the pics we’d get of Prince Coal’s exploits. He’s mellowed out way too much.”

My gut sinks.

“Do not start on him again,” the guy says. “It’s a good thing he’s not smearing Christmas’s reputation.”

I hate myself. “Smearing the reputation how?”

The girl flips her hair, whacking Iris in the face, and Iris full-on convulses with the shock of it. “Oh, it’s—he’s never been trustworthy, you know?” She uses a candy cane cookie as a wand as she talks. “Entertaining, sure. But what’s he gonna do for Christmas? Can he keep up with what his father’s done?”

“Yeah,” I say. “Right. The, um, reigning Santa. He’s a pretty great guy.”

“Great? Ha!” She cups her hands around her mouth and shouts, “The King!”

Up and down the table, cheers bark out. Genuine cheers.

“You don’t get a reaction like that being merely great. He’s done things for Christmas no other Santa has!”

“Such as…?”

My question seems to shake her out of her stupor for a blip. “Oh. Um—joy is up. Like, skyrocketing up.”

“So if the reigning Santa, I don’t know, maybe said, ‘ Hey, I’ll get Christmas joy on a global scale, we’ll have endless magic for everyone, but to have that, we’re gonna overtake other Holidays, ’ you’d say…”

This is, unsurprisingly, the moment the conversation breaks. From a friendly chat to her realizing I’m after something.

“What is wrong with you?” the girl asks. “Santa would never do that. We’re Christmas. What’s your problem?”

“Nothing, nothing. I’m… visiting from New Year.”

I drop the other name and gauge her reaction.

Her confusion doesn’t break, but she shrugs like that makes sense, like of course such an oddball person wouldn’t be from here. “Well. Welcome to Christmas. Christmas !” She turns away to start another cheer, and yeah, she’s drunk.

I can’t very well base the attitude of the North Pole on this one conversation, but the fact that the whole table reacts to her cheers with the same enthusiasm sits in my stomach like iron.

This is the image my father has worked to provide. Perfection one step beyond mortal—with him as this regaled savior, me as some wild child who can’t be trusted, and Kris nonexistent. He never really hated my negative image in the press, did he? On some level, he probably wanted me to keep fucking up, except when it endangered Christmas.

The only upside is that this girl seemed appalled at the idea of blackmail. So. There’s that.

Iris has gone somber too. Kris whispers something to her, and she nods, pulling up that trained stoic expression.

“Christmas,” I mimic the cheer, voice flat.

Hex presses into me. It yanks me out of my spiral so assuredly that I whimper in relief.

“Here,” he says. “I made this for you.”

He holds out a plate. On it is a gingerbread man, or what was until recently a gingerbread man, only his leg has been amputated and he’s coated in green frosting, with brown chocolate sprinkles formed into eyes and a gaping mouth. There’s a glob of red frosting on the missing leg, and I bust out laughing.

“You made me a gingerbread zombie.”

“Christmas and Halloween.” He grins.

This is the perfect opening to ask what he thinks about us. About after. Because there will be an after, all this will work out, nothing will implode. And in that after…

God, I want there to be an us.

But Hex threads his fingers into the gap of my jacket, misreading my strain. “You will fix this. Their opinion of you.”

It sinks in, a heavy stone. Because that’s what I should be worried about. And I am. Also. If problems were bees, I’d be a fucking hive.

I scratch the back of my neck. “I made a point to stop reading the press about us. But I guess I should start again, huh? See what my father is letting out. Or”—I inhale, sugared cookie air and Hex’s own sweet, citrusy warmth—“I keep doing what I think will fix things because wasting energy on PR bullshit gives me a migraine.”

“You should care what your people think of you.”

“We’ve been manipulating them for years. How can I undo that? And the worst part is I was actively playing right into my dad’s image of me.”

“You’re taking steps to undo it all now.” Hex touches my chin. “You do realize how suited you are to this job, as Santa? You make people happy. You make them laugh. You bring joy. You can do this, Coal. It won’t happen overnight, but you can start to change their minds now that you know the story they believe.”

My eyes shift through his, back and forth, letting him center me. “How are you so sure? I don’t think I’ve ever had half as much conviction as you put into what you said just now, and you have that much conviction about everything .”

Hex gives another of those easy, dismissive shrugs, the ones I know are a sign that his true emotions are churning hard and fast beneath his surface.

“Would you like to know my secret?” he asks. All we’ve said has been low, but I lean closer, drawn into him.

“Always. Every single secret you have.”

Fingers still on my chin, he twists my head and presses his lips to my ear. A shiver walks down my spine at the ghost of his breath on my skin.

“I fake it until I believe it,” he whispers. “Everyone’s wearing a fa?ade, whether they are actively posing for photos or merely trying to survive their day. And so my fa?ade is that I never let my true uncertainty show, because often the thing I am uncertain about will resolve itself once it senses no resistance in me.”

I move my head, letting his lips run across my jaw. “Have I told you how incredibly hot it is when you talk?”

“When I talk? As in, all the time, or a specific—”

“All the time. Every word you say. Catastrophically hot and so damn wise I could weep.”

Hex smirks, cheeks aflame. “I gave you a secret of mine,” he says, pulling back. “In payment, I want a secret of yours.”

I break off the gingerbread zombie’s head and eat it. “Fire away. I’m an open book.”

“Why do you not have conviction in yourself?”

I pause mid-chew, mouth full of cinnamon and nutmeg and vanilla frosting.

“You have an incredible amount to offer,” Hex presses. “And you are not a fool—you know you are quite capable, quite smart. Yet you lack confidence in a way that makes little sense.”

I fight to give one of my signature charming smiles. “Please. I exude confidence.”

“You project confidence. But beneath that, you doubt yourself.”

His hand rests on my thigh. Gentle. Not pushing me. And the way he sits in silence, I know he’d wait on me, give me space, just as I do with him.

“I’m not the pillar,” I say. I stroke my fingers over his, flip his hand and trace the lines of his palm.

“The pillar?”

“The reliable one. That’s Kris. And I only just realized that’s the role he took on, the caretaker, and god if that didn’t smack me upside the head with guilt. Because I was always the funny one. The one who made him laugh. And the one time I tried to be more, I fucked up. Massively.” I hesitate, reluctance and shame capping me, but I grit my teeth and say to the bench, “Did you hear about the economic crash in New Koah?”

Hex is silent for a beat. “A few years back?”

“Yeah. That was me.”

“That was… you? How?”

Breath blisters like embers in my lungs. “I arranged it so all outstanding Christmas wishes got granted in the capital city, and the entire country broke because of it.”

I needed to tell him. He deserves to know exactly what type of guy he’s—doing whatever it is we’re doing with. But the moment the words are in the air, I realize that I’m admitting the biggest mistake I’ve ever made to the most self-possessed and responsible person I’ve ever met. The only reaction he’ll have is disgust, that he ever let me touch him, and I can’t stop the scalding sear of panic from burning across my face.

But Hex’s expression goes serious. “That was the night we met,” he guesses, brows relaxing as connection forms. “ That was what you were talking about.”

“I—yeah.”

He smiles. Smiles. “Our conversation makes far more sense now.”

My mouth drops open in an unabashed gawk. “That’s all you have to say?”

“What should I say?”

“How fucked up what I did was!” My voice breaks, and I feel people look over, but I don’t care, can’t, so much of my being is chained to this conversation now. “How—how dangerous and irresponsible and—you’re so calm. I—I don’t understand.”

He edges closer on the bench and squeezes my hand in both of his. “Coal. Look at me.”

I’m not, though. I’m staring at the way he’s holding my fingers in his, intertwined.

“Why did you do it?” he asks.

And that rockets my gaze up. No one, no one, has ever asked me that before. They all just leap to accuse me of how dumb it was or remind me of what the repercussions were.

“Does it matter?” I whisper.

Hex nods. “To me it does.”

I hold. Give him another moment to realize he should be horrified by me.

Then I dig into my pocket and pull out my phone.

Hand shaking, I thumb through saved photos until I get to one. The one. An image of the letter that had been my deciding factor.

Dear Santa. Daddy left and I don’t think he’s coming back this time. I really want my mom to have some money for Christmas so she doesn’t have to worry about him helping us, okay? All the kids at school laugh at me for still believing in you but I know you’ll help us because Mom said I’m always really good. I’ll trade all the toys you’ll ever leave me if you’ll give her some help.

I show it to Hex and watch as he reads it. His expression melts, the sinking sadness I’d felt the first time I’d read it. Hell, the sadness I still feel reading it.

“There are thousands of letters like this in our database.” My voice is porcelain delicate. I don’t recognize it coming out of me. “This isn’t even the most heart-wrenching one, not by a long shot, and I couldn’t… I had to do something. I had to.”

Hex’s focus eases up to my eyes. “You did not fulfill the wishes to hurt those children.”

I’m halfway through putting my phone back in my pocket when I convulse at his statement. “God, no! Absolutely not—”

He holds up his hand. “I have a point, I promise. You had good intentions. And no, good intentions are not always enough. But I do not believe it was an irresponsible thing that you did. It was misguided, perhaps. Honestly, I don’t know many people who could read letters like that and not grant whatever that child wanted. The difference lies in how you proceed now, in what you do next. If you keep doing things without considering the ramifications, or if you refuse to enact any change and surrender to complacency, then I would label you irresponsible. But, Coal—you’re learning from your mistake, and you’re still trying. That is brave and admirable, and exactly what each Holiday needs in its leader.”

Brave and admirable pile in with honorable and I’m sitting here next to him unable to comprehend how he sees me like this. I almost argue with him, lay out a list of all the reasons I’m none of those things and here, this is why you shouldn’t trust me, why I’m too much of a mess to possibly be admirable, fuck.

But he squeezes my hand again, plays with the ring on my thumb, and everything he’s ever said to me has been purposeful from the start. He doesn’t speak without assessing the possibilities and truth in what he says, so he wouldn’t say something wrong.

He sees me as someone honorable, brave, and admirable, and in this moment, I let myself believe I really am that man.

My eyes burn. I sniff, hard, and my attention is ripped to all the people around us. Iris and Kris are talking to a group at the next table over, doing more of our duty than I currently am, but I stare at them until I can get my breathing under control, until I know I can speak without falling apart.

“If you need to make a joke,” Hex whispers, “I’d be happy to give you some kind of setup.”

I laugh. That laugh shatters through the tightening of emotion and I look at him in relief and raging, delirious gratitude.

Fuck everyone around us. Fuck anything that might keep me from him in this moment.

I cup his jaw in my hand and kiss him. Nothing consuming, not like I would in private. This is a conversation; this is Thank you, you make me want to be the person you think I am. A simple, gentle meeting of lips and tongue, the shared taste of vanilla frosting and cookie spices. It feels inadequate, but his smile when I shift back is anything but inadequate. Bright and beautiful.

Forehead to his, I look down at our hands, still entwined. “Our mom left when I was eight,” I say. “Kris was seven.”

I see Hex try to angle to look at me without separating our foreheads.

“And no amount of perceived perfection or joy stopped it or brought her back,” I continue. “Joy is a potent magical resource, but I was so certain, for so long, that it wasn’t as powerful as one person making a stupid, selfish choice.”

Hex lifts my hand to his mouth and kisses my thumb, the one wearing his ring. “No. Joy wins out, every time.”

I push back to see his face.

He smiles at me, soft and sad, and I know he’s thinking about his sister, how she got taken from him because of one person making a stupid, selfish choice too.

“I’m starting to believe that,” I whisper. “Because of you.”

His smile goes a little crooked. “Because of me?”

“But you were wrong about something.”

“Doubtful.”

“You said—oh, hilarious. I’m serious. You said we’re stewards of the things that help people endure whatever awful stuff they have to face.”

He nods.

“We aren’t just stewards. We deserve it too. We deserve to feel this happiness, to feel this joy, to feel this magic. It’s ours as much as it is the world’s.”

“And even if we don’t”—his eyes are still soft—“that’s why we fight so hard for our Holidays. Because we are the lights that help people when they’re at their worst. We’re what remains to lift them up when everything else seems dismal.”

“You really believe we have some higher purpose. That everything will work out.”

“I know it will.”

“Even when you were forced here as a political pawn? Even when my dad threatened Halloween? How does any of that go towards helping bring joy to the world?”

Hex’s lips raise, brightening his whole face. “It did bring joy, Coal. It brought us together.”

Well damn.

I kiss him again.

Because I have to. Because I can. Because he’s right.

And then I drag myself away from him, a feat of incredible strength honestly, and join my brother and Iris in talking to people, because this will all work out too.

I won’t let it do anything else.